Finally, a court has sent a woman to prison for a significant amount of time because she stood by and allowed her lover to abuse, beat and kill her child.

“Oleander Labier was 5 years old when rescue workers found her dead with broken bones from head to toe in the Gresham, Ore. home of Christopher A. Rosillo and Guadalupe Quintero. But by then she’d already been horribly abused for more than three years. Now Quintero, a former beauty-pageant queen and the girlfriend of the deceased girl’s father, Rosillo, is heading to prison for 20 years for “making it easy” for her lover to starve and abuse the little girl until she finally keeled over.

The Oregonian reports today that Quintero was handed the sentence after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter charges stemming from the child’s death. The woman also admitted to beating the child herself with a belt on several occasions.

Rosillo is expected to plead guilty to his own unspecified charges later this week. It’s unclear if the bargain will keep him from receiving a life sentence or worse, but generally that’s how these things work.

Little Oleander’s years of abuse came to light on April 13 last year, when Gresham police arrived at the couple’s house after receiving a call that the little girl wasn’t breathing. The girl was rushed to a nearby hospital shortly afterward, but was dead before she got there.

Broken bones–some months old–were found all over the girl’s body, and she was grossly malnourished, weighing a scant 28 pounds.”

…

The mother’s response at the hearing was:

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to protect Oleander as much as I should have. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. And I didn’t choose for this to happen.”